State grant to support precision machining firms

Date: 11/4/2008

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor



CHICOPEE The precision manufacturing industry in Western Massachusetts received a boost for continued growth last week when Secretary of Housing and Economic Daniel O' Connell announced the awarding of a $500,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's John Adams Innovation Institute to the Regional Employment Board (REB) of Hampden County,

The grant was announced at Hoppe Tool Inc. in Chicopee and would be used to address concerns discovered in a survey of precision manufacturers in the Pioneer Valley in 2005. Among the principal concerns were the industry's aging workforce and the lack of a means to recruit a new generation of workers.

The $500,000 will be supplemented by an additional $238,400 from private sector funding, William Ward, the executive director of the REB, said.

The fund will be administered by the REB's Pioneer Valley Regional Competitiveness Council and will be used to:

strengthen partnerships between local companies to address issues of workforce development;

improve the industry to engage new markets by enhancing its infrastructure for technology development;

directly improve the companies' capacity for innovation by providing support to assist firms in adopting new technology;

and assess the feasibility of a developing a Center for Advanced Precision Manufacturing Technology that will serve as a sustainable industry focal point.

O'Connell said he hopes grants such as this one will help rename the Pioneer Valley to the "Precision Valley" and become "the center of the precision manufacturing universe."

"In such tough economic times this is exactly the time to invest for the future," Ward said.

Ward said the Western Massachusetts Chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association has supported the new "cluster" approach of companies helping one another to move forward.

New manufacturing technologies need to be included in the curriculum of area vocational programs both on the high school and college levels, Ward added. The proposed Center for Advanced Precision Manufacturing Technology would assist in that effort.

Mayor Michael Bissonnette noted that Chicopee has lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs with the demise of firms such as Uniroyal and Facemate.

"Those jobs aren't coming back," he said. "But new jobs are coming."